Well, I've pretty much finished the book since my last blog, and I haven't really been blogging, because I've been so busy reading. At any rate, I've certainly got a few things to blog about, so I'll break them up over the next few days and talk about them in small bits. Let me preface this section by saying this: Do not feel obligated to read this whole blog. It might really frustrate you to read the whole thing, and then realize it doesn't have any real conclusion, or point in the end. That said today's blog topic is Helen as the  result of coupling beauty and necessity.
    "The rape of Nemesis was the most formidable theological gamble of Zeus's reign. To provoke a forced convergence of beauty and necessity was to challenge the law of heaven. Only Olympus could have sustained such a thing, certainly not earth where that challenge blazed uncontrollably throughout Helen's lifetime. it was a time marked...by calamity. But it was also the time men would go on dreaming of, long after the fire had gone out." This passage prompted a sort of flood of contemplation for me. See, for the most part I just appreciate the book for its narrative quality, but there are a few passages, including this one, that just make me think about everything; things that don't even seem related to the book, but they are, I'm sure, in some strange way. For now, however, I'll try to stay as on topic as I can.
   So Zeus goes through this whole elaborate rouse to rape Nemesis, and then from the egg Nemesis lays, Helen hatches in Leda's womb basically, Ergo the forced coupling of Necessity and Beauty. But is Helen herself necessity and beauty? Helen is beautiful, yes. In fact, she is the most beautiful. People waged a nine year war over her, because she was so ineffably beautiful. But in what ways did Helen represent necessity? I had a divergence in my thought here. Firstly, when I could not think of any way in which Helen embodied necessity, I got abstract. I thought "Well I suppose that death is a necessity, as is the end of an era, and Helen was the death of the heroes, and the end of their age." But that seemed way too far fetched, so I tried to think of how she actually did represent necessity, and all I could come up with was this: essentially, Helen herself is the necessity. Once you've seen something so beautiful, can you feel any other way, but to feel as though you need it? Can you really live as full a life without it? Or perhaps it's not so much the obtaining of beautiful things that is a necessity, but the wanting of beauty. Wanting what one finds beautiful is essentially the beginning of loving something, and what is more necessary than love?
    But Helen isn't really an embodiment of love either, she is something lusted after, and Calasso describes her as a fire that rages and destroys, not something easily loved. So like a fire, she kills all who try to get too near her. Except for Theseus, but he was the exception only because he was able to abandon her, to keep his distance, to avoid seeing Helen as the necessity. And here I kind of went on a train of thought tangential to the original. Theseus took the virginity of the most beautiful girl ever to live. In effect, he "initiated" her into the life of lust and careless abandonment she would know (albeit know the other side of) for the rest of her life. Theseus was also "the initiate of heroes". Helen was no hero. In fact, Helen herself brought about "the end of the age of hereoes." The end of the Theseus, and his other initiates. In my thoughts this makes a bit of sense, because Helen's own true mother is Nemesis, vengeance. And what better way to take revenge on Theseus for taking advantage of, and then deserting her, than to wipe out his entire generation of friends? But  I digress.
   There is also the possibility that Helen doesn't embody each in representing their coupling, but is rather just a memento of the coupling of necessity and beauty, of Nemesis and Zeus. But which was which? Nemesis, a figure of necessity, was also super beautiful, and Zeus, the god of gods, was able to finally "[unite] himself with her, out of powerful necessity." so each had a bit of both beauty and necessity. but Zeus's necessity seems less like something bound to happen, and more like something forced to happen, but what happens happens, and is therefore necessary to history, simply because it exists. This powerful necessity is not the same as something necessary, but rather a different definition of necessity (definition number 5 of 5 in Webster's dictionary in fact): an unavoidable need or compulsion to do something. In this case, that something was Nemesis (bad joke). So maybe it is in this definition, which Helen's necessity is embodied. People have an uncontrolable need or desire to have her. Like Zeus needed to have Nemesis.
   So how is Helen both beauty, and necessity? This question I still can't really answer with any certainty. Perhaps this is because this coupling "could only be sustained on Olympus, certainly not on earth...." or perhaps the answer is just eluding me because I missed something in the reading, or perhaps it's just one or a mixture of the answers I've already proposed. If anyone has any other thoughts, I'd love to hear them!

Laters Alligators, Jerrod